Arts and Crafts

As an artist and maker, you might sell your work direct to consumers, you might be hired to create artwork for an organisation, or do both. You might also consider roles in an art-related field such as galleries, exhibitions or community art. Because of this wide range of ways to work, artists can also be employed in a number of ways. They can be self-employed, freelance, work in other roles to support their practice, or balance a combination of these approaches. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘portfolio career’.

On this page we have aimed to give an introductory overview of some job roles you might explore, as well as ways to build experience, links to information about freelancing and how to find opportunities.

This page focuses on creating and producing original artistic or craft work. If you're interested in working with art rather than primarily creating it yourself, explore:

  • Art Business for commercial galleries, auction houses, art fairs and organisations that sell, promote and manage art.
  • Museums and galleries for curatorial work, collections, conservation, exhibitions, learning and public engagement.

Explore job roles

What defines an ‘artist’ is likely to be unique to each individual. You might see your art as defined by the medium you use, its purpose or your own voice. This also might change as you work through your career.

Below, we have outlined a number of different roles that involve making, designing and producing original artistic work. Of course, this list is not exhaustive. You can use the links below to find out more about how you might build skills and experience in these areas, as well as pathways into these roles. You may notice that some roles have professional bodies or qualifications associated with them. In this instance it is useful to be aware of any criteria to join the organisation, resources they recommend or if they have any community and careers resources that you can access.

There are also roles that use artistic and creative skills in other sectors and industries, for example:

The list goes on! Don’t forget the transferability of your creative skillset – consider, where else might you see art? Can you find out who created it and get in touch with them to find out more about their job and the previous skills and experience that helped them on their career path? This might lead to discovering new roles of interest.

Getting in and getting experience

Gaining experience can have many benefits. It can help you to:

  • Develop your artistic voice, style and confidence
  • Build your portfolio, a great way to be able to share examples of your work – there is more guidance about building a portfolio here: A guide to creating your PDF portfolio
  • Expand your network, potentially leading to more learning or opportunities
  • Promote your work
  • Try out a role or explore a sector to find out if you enjoy it!

Experience can include a range of opportunities, how you decide to build experience is likely to depend on your artistic practice. For example, it might include:

As part of building experience or applying for roles you may also want to consider how you promote yourself or your work as an artist, as well as how to protect your work. There are some good starting points for this here:

We also have more guidance on freelancing on our website: Freelancing in the Creative Industries

Finding and applying for opportunities

As we have already outlined, there are many different pathways to working in the creative sector or pursuing your creative practice. It is important to reflect on what is important to you for your next steps, as well as to do further research into what these pathways can look like for your artistic medium. For example, exploring how many roles are advertised as full-time in your area of interest, versus taken on as freelance contracts. Opportunities to be aware of include, but are not limited to:

  • Applying to advertised creative roles and opportunities directly
  • Freelancing: See our information here: Freelancing in the Creative Industries
  • Funding: Grants for your work may be available with a specific remit. For example, on a project basis, or for artists’ development. Grants will often also have eligibility criteria. For more information see: Grant funding for artists
  • Creative residencies: A residency is a structured time for an artist to work on a specific project or concept. For more information see: Artist residencies

To find these opportunities, and others, there are a number of strategies you might consider:

To ensure the employer or organisation is seeing your most relevant work, tailor your portfolio to each application. Just as you would do with a CV and cover letter.

This article from Artquest also outlines some starting points and considerations: Starting out as an artist

Further resources

Next steps